In the land of the Storyteller’s Night Sky there’s a lot of whimsy and rhyme and ‘once upon a time’, all meant to capture the majesty, the beauty, and the mystery of our celestial world in a way that celebrates our place within it. For several years my sister and I have been at work on a project called “The Star Tales of Mother Goose”, and at this link to Interlochen Public Radio, you can hear the fun we had a couple years ago, taking the story off the page and putting it into song. This is perfect for singing under the starry skies of May each year, where the Mother Goose Rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” comes to life in the constellations overhead. Joining me at the IPR studio for this recording were Caroline Barlow (guitar/vocals) and Aliana Lee (vocals).
Be sure to to listen again and again so you can sing along with our song to the stars, where you’ll find the “cat” is our constellation Leo, the Lion, chasing the “little dog”, Canis Minor over the western edge of the world. The “fiddle” is the starry group Lyra, rising up in the northeast on May nights when the Moon comes to New Phase among the stars of Taurus, the Bull (there’s a cow jumping over the Moon!). Also on May evenings, the plane of the Earth’s orbit is perpendicular to the galactic plane, and our Milky Way seems like a flat dish hugging the horizon that seems to disappear, or run away from view, while the ‘spoon’ aka the Big Dipper is on high overhead!